Managerial Advisor, Glenn Roeder believes that the players deserve credit for turning around a sticky run of form with last Saturday’s big win against Hartlepool.
Buoyed by the result, Roeder says training has been particularly good in the run up to the weekend.
“Training has been very good this week as you can imagine but we have had a disappointing start to the season prior to beating Hartlepool 6-1. We are honest people and the players are a great group of lads.
“Pre-season was excellent and training has always been good. It is just that we hit a run of games where we were conceding goals that when I first joined the club last year, we wasn’t.
“The lads took the stick that they deserved after losing the three games, especially against Orient and Grimsby, but I just think it shows the character in this current side to go a goal down and end up winning the game 6-1.”
With a full week to prepare for Saturday’s game for the first time this season, rather than give the players extra time off, Roeder says they have been working harder than ever.
“This week we have had a couple of afternoons because we haven’t had a game on a Tuesday, so we have been doing double sessions just to make sure we keep the fitness topped up to the levels that we know we need to carry out the amount of running that is needed in a game.
“It is a game we need to win, we need back-to-back wins. In any of the leagues there aren’t any easy games and you would think that Crawley would be hurting badly from the 3-0 defeat to Portsmouth and they will want to fight back. We will need to meet that challenge, especially early on in the game and take our game to them.”
Having been disrupted over the last week with a few injuries and international call-ups, the health of the squad looks to be in good shape going into the Saturday’s game at the Lamex.
“Jobi arrives back tomorrow and we will assess him then. Gorman has got a slight knock as well but we are not expecting a problem with him for the weekend.
“Wilkinson is back in training, he trained this morning and there has been no reaction. Hopefully when he comes in tomorrow morning, he will train again and then Darren has got a nice problem because we have got three very good central defenders to choose two from.
“Kennedy is back in training as well, working hard. As Ben said to me after the game though, ‘I don’t know if I will get a game in the youth team now that we have won 6-1!’.
“That is the beauty of having a squad now that is virtually doubled up in every position. We have got two players of a similar ability for every position on the pitch, so I think it is a great motivating factor for the players that do have the shirt.”